


we'll live ever after

by ThatGirlTheyKnow



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, I think I have a problem, Not Beta Read, this is the third fairy tale valduggery au I've written in four days but the only one I've posted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 01:26:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatGirlTheyKnow/pseuds/ThatGirlTheyKnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s like a fairy tale. The beauty and the beast fall in love.</p><p>It’s like a fairy tale, but it’s not that simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we'll live ever after

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry this is so... inadequate. I'm going to rewrite it, I think. For now, thoughts?  
> (I own nothing.)

It’s like a fairy tale. The beauty and the beast fall in love.

It’s like a fairy tale, but it’s not that simple.

-

Their village is small, but well-off, and on the edge of a thick forest that goes for miles and miles.  The people who live in it are happy and peaceful, and many are born in the doctor’s house and die in their beds less than a mile down the road. When traveller’s come into town, and do not cause trouble, they are embraced warmly and then sent on their way. Rarely do people settle in the town.

_Don’t go too far into the forest. If you find the manor, you’ve gone too far. Do not approach it, do not go any further. Run, run lest the devil inside sees you._

Stephanie never really fits in to her village. Where the other children are playful and respectful to adults, she’s serious and rebellious. She questions authority at every turn and when she was a child she would run off into the forest every day, and her father would have to chase after her, laughing as he did so. Other adults thought she was a trouble maker. Her parents thought she was a free spirit.

Her uncle Gordon dies when she’s twelve.

(Uncle Gordon, who wrote stories that she wasn’t allowed to read – too dark, too scary. Gordon who was rude and sarcastic and the best uncle in the world, who loved her and treated her like a grown up even when she was a kid.)

At the funeral, Stephanie sees a man in a tan coat stand at the edge of the graveyard, near the forest. Tall and slender and still. A man Stephanie has never seen before. He’s wearing a hat and a scarf and gloves, covering every bit of skin on his body.

He turns and walks away – straight into the forest.

Stephanie doesn’t think before she runs after to follow him.

_And if the devil inside sees you – may God have mercy on your soul._

-

She’s been in the forest before – of course – but she’s never been this far in, she realises, when the trees get thicker and denser and she is struggling to find a path. The man is visible, just, through the trees up ahead, so Stephanie steps lightly, avoids branches and dead leaves.

She should turn back – _the devil the devil the monster in the woods_ – but she doesn’t. She follows the man deeper and deeper. When she can’t see him anymore, she continues – he has to be going somewhere, she’ll find it soon.

When she stumbles out of the trees into a clearing she had not seen coming, she gasps.

And feels herself go cold.

Then, for some reason, as though she has been possessed, she walks until she is in front of the door of the house – _the house that shouldn’t exist, it’s supposed to be a myth, the devil, God have mercy on your soul –_ and she knocks.

-

The door opens, and the man is there, in his same tan coat. But the hat is gone, and the scarf, and the gloves.

“You were at the funeral. Are you one of Gordon’s nieces?”

Stephanie feels herself going faint, and the last thing she sees is the man stepping forward to catch her.

-

Stephanie wakes up on an armchair in an unfamiliar place. For a moment, she’s confused, until she looks up and sees the monster in front of her.

“You’re a skeleton,” she says, in a small, quiet voice.

The monster nods. “Excellent observational skills there, Stephanie. It is Stephanie, isn’t it? Gordon mentioned you a few times and I don’t think you’re one of the others. It’s very nice to meet you. I’m Skulduggery Pleasant.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

The monster tilts his head to the side. “Why would I do that? Did you do something that would make me want to kill you?”

“You’re a monster! You’re the reason I’m not allowed in the forest! You’re evil.”

The monster tuts quietly. He holds up his hands – a sign of surrender. “I know you’ve heard stories, but I can assure you they are not true. Gordon told me many times that I man not as terrifying as I think I am.”

“You knew my uncle?”

“We were friends.”

“My uncle was friends with a monster?”

“Now, don’t be hurtful. I’m just a simple skeleton living in the forest, minding his own business.”

“People in my village have been afraid of you for a hundred years!” cries Stephanie.

“I haven’t really done anything. It just so happens that once, somebody saw me without my disguise, and they told people about it, and, well, you know how rumours spread. Now, would you like some tea? I understand this may all come as a shock to you.”

-

When Stephanie gets home, an hour later, she’s smiling. She had fainted again when Skulduggery boiled water _with magic_ and then had gotten slightly ill from the tea that had been in his kitchen for twenty years, but once he started telling her about himself, and magic, the fear had left her and been replaced by wonder and excitement.

There is magic. Real, honest, not-evil _magic_.

And (after she had stolen his hat and threatened to run away with it) Skulduggery Pleasant had promised to show her.

-

**_Five Years Later_ **

Valkyrie swings one leg over the ledge of her bedroom window and looks back at her reflection. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”

The reflection looks sad. “What are you doing tonight?” It’s sitting on her bed and fiddling with it’s skirt.

“Just a lesson. We’re not going out tonight.”

“Unless there’s a murder.”

Valkyrie shrugs. “Yeah. Or something gets stolen. Or… well, yeah. But we’re _probably_ not going out tonight. He says my control of water is sloppy.”

“Okay,” the reflection says.

Valkyrie sighs and jumps to the ground.

When she gets to Skulduggery’s house, she opens the door without knocking and collapses onto his couch. He looks at her from an armchair.

“You’re here for a lesson, not a nap.”

“You have an oddly comfortable couch for a guy who doesn’t sleep.”

“I don’t think couches are actually made for sleeping, Valkyrie.”

“You know nothing.”

“I know a lot more than most people.”

Valkyrie turns to look at him and grins. “Of course.”

“Of course.”

-

Five years ago, Valkyrie started her lessons in magic. Now, at the age of seventeen, Valkyrie Cain is a name known throughout the magical communities and mortal communities that means _danger_.

-

Five years ago, Valkyrie started her lessons in magic with Skulduggery Pleasant, and now, at the age of seventeen, she’s in love with him.

-

Valkyrie sits with her family in the sitting room and rests her cheek against the cushions of the couch. She’s wearing her least girly dress, one that is a simple brown with no embroidery in sight. Her feet are bare.

“Stephanie,” her mother says, sitting down next to her. “We need to talk.”

Valkyrie looks up. Melissa’s face is full of worry and nervousness. She feels her stomach drop.

-

She leaves the house ten minutes later, running out the front door still in her dress and still with bare feet. Tears of betrayal sting at her eyes as she grabs her skirts and runs into the forest, ignoring the stick and rocks on her feet, and she runs and runs until she reaches Skulduggery’s house then throws the door open with a bang.

The skeleton appears a moment later.

“Valkyrie, what’s-?” She throws her arms around him and presses her face into his collarbone.

“They want me to get married, Skulduggery. Please, you can’t let them. They say people have been talking, I’m getting old. I don’t want to get married.”

Skulduggery wraps his arms around her waist, and is silent for several long moments. “Your feet are bleeding,” he says eventually, quietly. “Come in, we’ll get you fixed up and we can talk.”

-

“I can’t get married,” Valkyrie says when her feet are bandaged, there’s (fresh) tea in her hands and she’s lying on her couch with her head against Skulduggery’s shoulder. “If I get married, I’ll have to stop. There’s no way a man would let me sneak out of the house. I’d have to… to stay at home and clean and cook and have babies.” Her face scrunches up, horrified. “I can’t do that.”

“You don’t have to. Your parents would never make you marry a man you didn’t want to marry. They wouldn’t make you get married at all if you were so resistant to the idea.”

Valkyrie scoffs. “Eventually something would happen. A family would offer them enough money for me to marry their son, or, or I’d just cave because people in town were staring at me all the time. But I don’t want that kind of life, Skulduggery. I just want to keep this, forever.” _I want to be with you forever._

“You want to solve mysteries and fight crime and use magic forever?”

“Why, are you getting sick of me?” Valkyrie smiles and turns so she’s sitting cross-legged, facing him. “It’s only been five years.”

Skulduggery tilts his head and reaches out a gloved hand to cup her cheek. “I could never get sick of you, Valkyrie.”

-

She runs away from home a week later, wearing the clothes Ghastly made her, with a small bag over her shoulder containing everything she wants to take with her.

She sleeps on Skulduggery’s couch while the skeleton sits in the armchair and watches over her. She wakes up crying in the early hours of the morning, and he holds her as she sobs and sobs about her baby sister and her mother and her father.

That night is the night she takes her partner’s skull in two hands and kisses his teeth.

“I could never thank you enough,” she whispers. “For everything you have done for me.”

He shakes his head, and holds her tightly. “You have no idea how much you’ve changed my life, do you?”

-

It all goes wrong a day later, when they hear shouts in the distance. Valkyrie sits up from the couch and looks at Skulduggery. “What’s happening? Why are there people in this far?”

Skulduggery, who was sitting next to her, grabs her hand. They run to a window, and through the tiny gaps in the trees, they see the flickering of fire.

“What are they doing?”

Skulduggery squeezes her hand. “If I had to guess? Coming for you.”

-

He doesn’t tell her to wait inside, or hide. When the villagers – people she grew up with, people she’s known her entire life – break through the trees, she follows him to the doorway, where they stand, a united front.

“Release her!” a hysterical man cries. “Release this poor girl!”

“This is a misunderstanding,” Valkyrie shouts. “I’m here on my own free will!”

“You don’t know what you’re saying!” the baker’s wife shouts to her, eyes sympathetic and scared. “This monster has you under its control.”

“He would never hurt me. He’s not a monster!” She steps forward, though her hand is caught by Skulduggery. “He’s my friend. Why won’t you people _listen_ to me? Are you all stupid?”

Skulduggery steps up behind her and he whispers in her ear. “There are pitchforks and there are torches and there are guns. We’re in danger, Valkyrie. If they think they can’t save you, they will kill you.”

“Do we have to fight?” she whispers back, meeting the eyes of individual members of the mob and seeing the resolution in their eyes. Skulduggery is silent.

“I won’t go with them.” She speaks louder now, so everyone in the clearing can hear her. “ _Nobody is going to be taking me anywhere_.”

( _Nobody is going to take me away from Skulduggery, nobody is going to hurt Skulduggery, and if anybody tries, I will stop them. I will kill them.)_

The crowd surges forward.

Valkyrie waves her hand, and a strong wind knocks them off their feet.

The crowd goes silent.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

A bullet hits her shoulder.

-

They leave the house the next day. They get their horses and they ride to away from the village forever, and do not look back. They burn the bodies that fell and they burn their clothes that are stained with blood. They burn the house.

The Sanctuary is not going be happy. Killing mortals, revealing magic.

They burn that part of their lives, and leave the ashes behind.

-

It’s like a fairy tale.

But not really.

 

 


End file.
